The ordering of the statuses changes when nodes change status

[Raphaël Badin]

In the UI, the ordering of the statuses changes when nodes change status (http://people.canonical.com/~rvb/status-change.png). It produces an annoying flickering impression.

When there is a lot of activity, it's hard to figure out what's going on when things move around. You can't just watch the numbers go up and down… because all the lines move around.

I suggest keeping the statuses sorted alphabetically.

[Blake Rouse (blake-rouse)]

This is a quick easy change but we should check to see what other think.

[Gavin Panella (allenap)]

I would also like the statuses to stay in order rather than reordering by count.

[Ricardo Bánffy (rbanffy)]

I like the the idea of keeping them sorted.

[Mike Pontillo (mpontillo)]

+1 for moving the statuses around.

I think I would prefer the statuses to be ordered not alphabetically, but logically. That way you could see the node counts "flowing" down during deployment. For example:

    NEW = 0
    COMMISSIONING = 1
    FAILED_COMMISSIONING = 2
    # not sure where "disk erasing" belongs
    DISK_ERASING = 14
    READY = 4
    RESERVED = 5
    ALLOCATED = 10
    RELEASING = 12
    DEPLOYING = 9
    DEPLOYED = 6

    # exceptional conditions
    # (put these at the bottom? indicate with a color and/or icon?
    # or separate with spacing, so they stand out?)
    MISSING = 3
    RETIRED = 7
    BROKEN = 8
    FAILED_DEPLOYMENT = 11
    FAILED_RELEASING = 13
    FAILED_DISK_ERASING = 15

[Mike Pontillo (mpontillo)]

Er, I meant to say +1 for NOT moving the statuses around. Sorry.

[Andres Rodriguez (andreserl)]

+1 not moving status, although, they should be probably ordered alphabetically.

[Blake Rouse (blake-rouse)]

Will be done! Quick an easy.

[Carla Berkers (carlaberkers)]

Eek, moving statuses are confusing!

To a user it makes most sense to order them by stages in the node life cycle, so pretty much as Mike suggested but with "disk erasing" between "allocated" and "releasing"

That gives users a better overview of their hardware utilisation and it helps them understand what the statuses mean.